February 13 – February 19

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I was worried that I’d have to choose between For Honor and De-Formers, but fortunately the latter got delayed to some point in the future, so thanks to Ready at Dawn for sleeping in a bit.

I pick For Honor with a small amount of trepidation, because I’m not entirely clear that Ubisoft is dedicated to providing single-player experiences anymore. I want to play a technical, deep, third-person combat game as a viking. The bloom comes off of that particular rose if I’m stuck fighting a bunch of teenagers who have more time than manners and spend their off-moments spamming “too EZ” in chat.

But if For Honor falls through on the single player, there are plenty of other interesting things coming out. Copoka is my backup, in which you play a pigeon that has to collect materials to build a nest. I have no idea if that’s going to have any multiplayer at all, but at least I can drive off the more annoying 1337 types with my vast arsenal of bird puns. I envision it going something like this:

Perhaps I'm just not an RTS fan. I wasn't too impressed with the first Halo Wars on Xbox 360, but a number of people whose opinion is trustworthy have declared it a suitably good title. I didn't dislike it, but it felt bland. This may largely be because I wanted to play as one of the soldiers on the ground instead.

Halo Wars 2 should be a pretty solid follow-up for Xbox One owners. For everyone else, there's MasterCard... or For Honor. The various betas have been firing our forum thread up with delighted players. It's not for everyone and some are having connection issues, but it's a competitive experience unlike that of the rest of the online gaming scene.

Me, though? My interest is in its single-player experience, which I've shown trailers and gameplay of to Greg. He may be uncertain of its quality, but enough campaign and story trailers have been put on display to guarantee a pretty solid solo experience.

Felix “I’ll have what she’s having” Threepaper

This week’s games are like the appetiser section of the menu – games to tide us over while we wait for the main courses to be served in the coming weeks.

Bucket Detective is about someone trying to write a novel and is aiming to be funny – I like these flavours, but it’s hard to get the balance right. The serving size is small (about an hour) so, either way, the taste won’t linger.

Flywrench is simple fare, like bread and olive oil, but done well enough that, before you know it, you’re too full for the rest of the meal.

I’ve gorged myself so many times on non-delicious filler at the Ubisoft all-you-can-eat buffet that I never want to go there again. Even an exciting new fusion dish doesn’t tempt me back in. For Honor may have a great single-player campaign, but I’ve just found this little place down the street with fantastic word-of-mouth that serves Witcher 3, and I think I’ll be eating there for a while.

But if everyone else is ordering an entrée … then I’ll choose Battle Islands: Commanders. It’s a bite-sized RTS – the whole map fits onto the screen – and they’ve filleted out the base-building. I am slightly disappointed that it doesn’t let tanks squish infantry, though.

Comments

Halo Wars, fwiw, was the first great application of an RTS to console. That's what worked so well with it. Otherwise it was pretty generic overall, which is likely true in part because of the license. Okay, mostly because it was developed for a controller.

Man, I can't wait for Steam's new Greenlight policy to go into effect. Such an absurd list of PC games every week to the point I can't be bothered to read the list.

NSMike wrote:

How did I live before digital distribution of old, cheap games?

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

You did live before digital distribution of old, cheap games. Now you just play games.